While working in the woods. How do you keep the ticks away?

The become engorged. Look like a small port red grape, then the release and fall off. Goggle them and see the bulls eye. That is the best way to know what you are watching for. Never saw them as a kid. Now they are very thick. My wife came in with one on her face last year. She had no idea it was there. She never walks on the lawn or goes near tall grass.

 

No ticks here
Mosquitoes ate them L OL

 

I'd like to buy some mosquitoes from Dave.
I'd much rather deal with those than ticks.
I hate ticks.

 

I take garlic pills daily.
Haven't had a tick on me in years.
I use Cutter or Off in the summer to keep chiggers off.
I seem to be like dessert to chiggers.
I did pull a dog tick off the dog today though.

 

Are there immediate reactions to Lyme, when someone is bit by a tick, or do the symptoms take months to show up?

 

How many would you like? I'll even throw in some black flies… no charge…

 

Wow… all this info has been interesting. Thanks. Think I'll have our entire property paved… 100 cords of firewood, just to start…

I'll be treating ticks this year with more extreme prejudice, that's for sure.

 

This is good info. I will try the permethrin and keep doing the Off spray too.

The garlic pills sound like a good idea, when I need bug repellant sometimes I will cut the ends off of a book of matches and swallow them. The sulfur sweats out the body and keeps flies and mosquitoes from biting me. I learned that trick in the Army but I would rather just take a garlic pill.

My sister has Lyme and I know how bad it affects her daily life. She is pure city girl and I am in the sticks and she ends up with Lyme.

 

Permethrin, I believe, was the active part of a fogging blitz I threw at our old farm one year. The chit flies were getting worse every year and by the time we put the place up for sale, the flies were out of a Stephen King book. Millions. I found a spray and fogger online, hit the early spring grass areas all around the barns/house and filled the barns too (looked like they were on fire with this stuff coming out of every nook and cranny including the roof. The dry stuff was incredible as it hung in the air for hours, not like a liquid type chem that'll fall to the floor pretty quickly. Over that next year… 95% less flies. I got em during their first breeding of the year.

Couldn't do that in the fight against ticks, cause I'd have to fill the woods with this stuff… my neighbors would prolly have me in jail…

 

I second what woodlands recommended the Sawyer insect repellent. Used it for the 1st time last year after a really bad tick year and had great results. Learned a lot about Lyme from my doctor when I had him check out a bite.

According to him in my area at least Lyme is fairly rare. The tick has to one be infected with the disease. 2 the tick usually has to be attached for a fairly long time I think somewhere for like 24 hours or more, due to how the tick eats. This is sort of nasty but the tick attaches and begins drawing blood from you, after full it then regurgitates and that is when the host becomes infected. Test for lymes is tricky as well because it takes a while for it to fully show up and there are lots of false positives due to this.

So as others have said tuck clothing in and check yourself or have others check you over!

 

Stinny.... My brother lives in Houlton and he got Lyme this summer. Dunno when/where/how, but he got to feeling sick for a while. I don't remember the symptoms, I think just mostly felt like crap and had no energy.

 

Is he still feeling that way, or was he able to get out from under it?

 

I was in KY at a cabin 3 years ago. I awoke with a tick on my man parts. It was horrible to get it off.

 

They gave him meds and it cleared up after a week or so. As far as I know back to 100%

 

That's great…

 

They "clamp" on pretty good don't they? And, after you get them off, they're hard to kill. Not at all like a blackfly or a skeeter. You prolly already know tricks to get them off, and most know not to squeeze the body at all. When they're so small, and in a "bad spot" it can be tough to get em off without help. I discovered ticks have multiple "stingers, fingers, claws", whatever you call them… and they will let go if you apply just a little continuous pull. One way to get hold of em is a piece of thread or very light fishing line. Start to make a knot. Keep it open enough to get the loop around the tick's neck/head… not the larger body… pull so it's tight enough to squeeze that area… add a slight pull, and wait. They'll let go in a few seconds. Then… unload the 12 gauge on em… buckshot works best…

 

MM,
What made you think the BP was from Lyme's? If that is what you are saying.... I never herd of that "connection" before? My brother had BP a few years ago. I can't remember exactly, but I thought he was told it was from an old virus like chicken pox or something like that.... ?

Lyme:
This will NOT be a popular post/info, but it's t he truth, don't shoot the messenger. I'm just reporting what goes on, not my opinion. I'm not sure what to believe with it actually! Let me start by saying I live in Brookhaven Hamlet on Long Island, apparently one of the hottest "hotbeds" of the Lyme's disease on the planet. We are loaded with wetlands, and whitetail deer, which of course are the main carrier of the "Deer Tick", which is the carrier of Lyme. That said, I can tell you more than 1/2 of doctors do not believe their is such a thing as Lyme disease. Even most of those that test and treat for it, and agree that something is there (aka the person is sick...), do not believe we know what the disease is, or even how really to treat it. Some insurance companies do not recognize it either, and will not pay for treating it. It is a VERY weird disease from this standpoint. There are some Docs on LI that will always test for it given symptoms or a tick bite, and there are some that will not. Then throw in that the tests for Lyme are NOT conclusive, meaning they can sometimes detect it, and they sometimes miss it. Even worse, the tests sometimes have both false positives and false negatives (meaning the test says you have Lyme, but you really don't, and vice versa). Many patients tested several times have different results with the same test, even sometimes with the same blood specimen. Sure makes you wonder about the accuracy of the "test"! Many folks on LI and in CT believe Lyme came from the guberments CDC buildings on Plum Island located a few miles off the end of Long Island, where the study animal diseases and once (many years ago!) developed/studied some biological warfare type stuff. I'm not one of those believers, but hey, you never know.

Lastly, I have also seen a special on TV (60 minutes I think?) where tests were performed for Tick repellents as mentioned above. None of them seemed to do a darn thing. A few ticks were filmed actually walking/swimming across a drop of the so called chemical said to repel and/or kill ticks. It was not limited to one particular brand or chemical, it was a whole bunch of them. Not saying they don't work, but it sure was an enlightening program.

What do I do to avoid them in the woods/wetlands which surrounds my entire house? I ONLY go into the woods during the winter months. Starting April 1, and ending around the first real good frost (Mid November), I do not go into the woods, period. Spring in particular is their most active time, beware of SPRING!.

The deer ticks which are the main carriers of Lyme, are too small for the fishing line trick. They are usually the size of the dot between these brackets [ . ]. I find the best removal method is burning them off. It will burn you a bit as well, but worth it to get them off!


I HATE TICKS AND SQEEEETTERRRS! Kill em all!!

 

I've always known deer ticks were small… and any that small will never be detected by me before the bullseye rash, that's for sure. My only defense is offense. Checking a dog would be next to impossible too, deer ticks would look like dirt specs.

I've had 3 wood ticks on me and I couldn't believe how tough they are. You're right, they're much bigger, usually, and you can pull em off.

Interesting info on Lyme. I've talked with my doc about tests for Lyme and he's said the same about a lot of false positive tests. They should change the name "tick" to PITA bugs…